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New Sig Line Rules and FAQ updates

The moderators and many others, from the forum to the Board, have been ruminating over the sig line rules since before I got involved. Today we introduce another stab at getting this right. I quote now from the new version from the Posting Guidelines FAQ:

Sig lines and other publicly visible info

As the world changes we are working to adapt the forum to be increasingly useful for members.
We have been through much debate and a couple different implementations; these are the current
rules.

Your sig line can contain a maximum of 4 lines, including line spaces, and 300 characters. You are welcome to include links, format it as you like and change the font, color and size of text. We are limiting the maximum text size to 3 (the default size is 2). You cannot embed images or objects from the internet (eg, YouTube video frames), but you can link to them.

The content of sig lines is governed by the general site guidelines (so no personal attacks, obscenities, political statements, SPAM, religion, etc.) These rules also apply to other ephemera such as avatars, location info, custom user title and any other fields visible with postings or in the public profile area.

As you can see, we have broadened your abilities to format your sig line, and given you more space in which to do it (3 lines -> 4 lines, 150 characters -> 300 characters).

We have also eliminated the discussion regarding commercial links and "click tracking". This was always a sore point. Many people have businesses and sidelines that they would like to include in their sigs, both for the advertising value and also because it represents an aspect of that person. Even personal homepages or blogs with incidental advertising on them could have been considered "commercial pages". Also, every indication I have received says that neither the club's web site team nor the board will soon have the bandwidth to pursue any kind of click tracking technology nor make use of the results. So, we are dropping those restrictions, although that doesn't mean that they couldn't be revisited at some later date.

HOWEVER. Moderators will be free to give infractions to people who create commercial signatures ("NEWEST FARKLES FOR YOUR BMW!! BUY! BUY! BUY!"), in an attempt to make their commercial signature a Spam posting.

It could be said that the mods have, up to now, put policing signatures towards the bottom of the priority list. This will no longer be true, and forum users with nonconforming signatures will be asked to change them and, should that not happen, or should the signature be an especially egregious violation, then it may be summarily deleted.

I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that the Posting Guidelines FAQ has also been changed to reflect the creation of the Tavern on the Screen area, which has its own special rules. I invite you to refresh your familiarity with the Guidelines, as your usage of the MOA's forum is bound by them.

Question...what about the situation where 4 lines in the forum feature that allows you to modify your signature results in only 3 lines in an actual post? There's a wrapping feature in the dialog box that prevents you going to 5 lines when in the end, the displayed signature will be 4 lines or even less.

The forum software enforces the limit on the number of "lines". In this case, 4 lines means that at most, you can have 3 Enter Key presses. You can create a signature with 300 characters and no Enters, and this will word wrap depending on the viewer's screen width into multiple lines, but this is not how the software counts lines and enforces the rules.

I experimented a bit. If I just hold the letter "a" down a bunch of times, it will wrap several times...no carriage returns. The 300 character limit seems to hold as I was over 300 and got an error. Once I reduced the total number of a's to 300, the signature worked despite the fact that on the signature modification screen the number of lines exceeded 4.

I tried putting an "a" on each line, hitting a carriage return at the end of each letter. Once I went past four, I got the error message. OK, that seems to work.

But when I tried my own signature line, even with only 4 carriage returns (and technically only 3 because there's no reason for the last carriage return), it complained that I had more than 4 lines. There were 5 physical lines in the display box, but I had only hit 4 carriage returns. Once I deleted one of the carriage returns, and one of the lines, then it seemed to work.

The rules seem to be there, but it doesn't make sense in practical application...

Long lines

Ok, I have done some more digging, Kurt. It turns out that there is an obscure parameter that says that a "line" is no more than 90 characters. The documentation says this is adjusted if you change the font size! It turns out that your long line will be considered a single line if you reduce its size to 1.